The civil aviation transportation industry has become a primary target of terroristic activities, since it has characteristics such as a large number of passengers, susceptibility to easy attack and a large effect afterwards.
After the terrorist attacks occurred on Sep. 11, 2001, the U.S. government put additional aviation safety inspections into practice, which demand inspection for explosives of all selected baggage. Known explosive detection systems obtain images of the contents in packages by X-ray (radioscopy) or CT techniques. The U.S. government regulates that all selected baggage must be inspected with respect to explosives by techniques certified by the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), starting from December of 2001. So far, the only one which has been certified by the TSA is CT technology.
Currently, the majority of security inspection CT machines all can obtain three-dimensional CT data. Since passenger flow volume at airport is very large, explosive detection systems for consigned and hand baggage require a high throughput. There is an urgent need for a solution to intelligently recognize prohibited articles, which can reduce working intensity, decrease anthropogenic factors and increase the throughput.